


fall apart without me, body

by tenkaede



Series: bingo prompt fills [1]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Dissociation, Gen, Most characters are very brief, Not Beta Read, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Incest, Post-Canon, Prompt: Dissociation, Shinguji Korekiyo Centric, apart from kiyo, vr au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 04:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenkaede/pseuds/tenkaede
Summary: It's been a long time since he's felt alive. Waking up from the simulation, he wonders if everything truly is just fictional.





	fall apart without me, body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/gifts).

Looking into the mirror is a painful task, because he is never sure if what he’s seeing is himself, someone else, or nobody at all. 

Never mind his hair, cut down to shoulder length in the aftermath of a hysterical breakdown (the knowledge that he had a breakdown, in itself, is hard to face) in choppy lengths and uneven strokes. Never mind his face, devoid of any semblance of life it once had, with cheeks too sunken to seem healthy and bags under his eyes too dark to ignore. Never mind his lips, chapped and broken and wrong in all the places that count. They’re too pale without her lipstick, too down without her smile, too exposed without his mask. 

It doesn’t seem like his body at all, if it ever was his. If he doesn’t have a body, then his soul is residing in some place not meant for him. He’s an imposter in the skin he’s known his whole life, or maybe he’s never known it at all.

After all, his skin, too, is broken in all the wrong places. Part of him holds distaste for the hospital gowns, with sleeves so short that they expose the scars on his arms. Part of him gets lost in how they look, how they feel, some like rivers and others like ravines, smooth or rough or old or red. When he stares into the mirror, into eyes that aren’t his and skin that should belong to her, he thinks he remembers gaining some of them.

A victim fighting back when he was fourteen, after her death was still new and his heart was still heavy and his hands were still clumsy. An unexpected retaliation when he was fifteen, when she had scolded him for not listening to the footsteps more afterwards (but had praised him for the friend anyway, masking any negativity with declarations of love). 

But then he remembers that everything was fiction. That, too, was fiction, wasn’t it? He can’t remember. Team Danganronpa had made a mistake, they had claimed, and their memories could not be recovered well. It’s alright, they claimed, until Amami had told them all through whispered words and thinly-veiled disgust that he remembers this happened last time, too. 

Some of it is fiction, they had said. Some of it is real. 

So he looks into the mirror, at nails that he remembers painting with her favourite nail polish and nails that he remembers raking over his thighs after a school day with frustration (in which he doesn’t remember her presence, at all) and wonders if maybe this body, too, is fiction. 

It would be an easy explanation as to why the body doesn’t feel like his. An easy explanation as to why when he walks, it’s all dull and lifeless and he feels puppet strings pulling at his flesh with an invisible puppetmaster of blue or pink or dark or crawling hair. An easy explanation as to why he can crawl back into the confines of his mind while the body goes over simple routine without much effort.

But then, he thinks, maybe it’s her at the strings. Of course, he hasn’t heard or felt her since he woke up from that hellish game, but if there’s anything about him that just  _ can’t _ be fiction, it’s her. Even if his progress of giving her friends is fake, she… 

Can’t. 

Maybe this is truly her body. The thought has crossed his mind more than once, both in his grasps for logic and in his unruly fits of desperation. Even if he can’t feel her, maybe the body truly belongs to her, and that is why he is the imposter here. Maybe he stole it from her, and she should be the one here in her place, and he should be dead, and everything would be much better that way. 

He can remember Ouma pitching the question after clapping a hand in front of his face to grab his attention, barely even trying to disguise his disgust. 

He can remember Ouma asking, in a tone of voice difficult to parse as either jest or sincerity, if he still wants his ‘freak’ of a sister in his body. If he’s glad she’s gone. 

He had mulled the question over. It had not hurt when he heard it, because, at the time, his mind had been wandering far from where the body sat. However, that meant he had not been able to give Ouma a complete answer, either. He does not remember how that boy’s face had looked, back then, when all of his surroundings had blurred into a ball of colours and sounds and smells, but he remembers the disapproving sound Ouma had made when he had simply shrugged and hummed and went back to eating. He remembers how Akamatsu had scolded Ouma to ‘leave Shinguji-kun alone’, but he also remembers how tired her voice had been. Maybe she had just been trying to avoid a possible conflict, rather than acting on concern. 

Regardless, he remembers what his answer truly was. 

If she came back, through words or feeling or using the body’s arms to wrap around it’s torso, he would take her back in a heartbeat. She’s his guide, his superior; the only source of love he’s ever had, because nobody here loves him and nobody here ever will, with good reason. 

If she came back, maybe it would make the forced ‘therapy’ sessions bearable. The ones where the nurses grab his arms and take him, whether he wants to or not, to a small room, where the quiet is too quiet, to speak. 

Given, his mind had still wandered, in those sessions. He had tried, for a while, to force himself back into the body. To move a mouth that isn’t his and lips that should be hers to form the answers that his peers deserve outside of simple words. 

Until he found that, perhaps, it’s better if he can only half-hear what his peers are saying. 

Sometimes, he’s so far away that Iruma’s accusations that he’s disgusting barely reach his ears. He’s disgusting. An incest-loving freak. Some kind of sick brand of pervert. He’s ‘talked’ with her more than once. Maybe her meaningless hostility and his passiveness is unsatisfying to the medical team, and that’s why he’s seen her more than once. 

Sometimes, he’s too aware. Those had turned out to be the worst times. He can remember all too clearly how Yumeno had looked when they had spoken. He hadn’t dared tried to apologize, and she had taken the reigns of the conversation, for better or worse. He can remember the way her fists clenched and shook against her thighs, how her eyes had narrowed and how she had bitten the bottom of her lips enough to draw blood.

He can remember what she had said. She hates him. She wishes he had been the victim in the second trial instead of Hoshi. She wishes she could have carried out his execution instead. She had liked watching it. She wants to punch him whenever she crosses him in the halls. Strangle him for killing her best friends, for leaving her alone, for making her want to die. 

He chooses to ignore the way her voice shakes, or the emptiness behind her words when she says she liked his death. He chooses not to catch the hitch in her voice when she finishes, or her mumur that she’d have rathered he’d just have killed her instead. 

Nobody steps in to intervene until Yumeno slowly turns furious in his silence and tries to throw herself at him. He can remember the way she had looked at him when they had dragged her out.

He can also remember his first session with Saihara. The faux detective had let the both of them sit in silence for… well. He doesn’t remember, exactly, how long. At some point his mind had wandered, and Saihara had started talking.

He can remember how Saihara had not even tried to hide the hollowness in his voice or the red around his eyes. Remembers how Saihara recounted how betrayed he had felt, finding out the real killer of Chabashira and Yonaga. Remembers how Saihara had sighed, had run his hand through his hair and up to the hat Team Danganronpa had given him as some sick kind of comfort. Remembers how Saihara, with guilt dripping from his mouth, had admitted he was glad that the execution was carried out, was glad at the empty space it had left behind. Remembers how he had followed it up with admitted his feelings are much more complex now, hidden behind hollow eyes and a mouth that squeezes tightly shut after he’s finished. 

And, of course, he can remember his session with Yonaga - Angie, she had reminded him, when he had started in saying ‘Yonaga-san’ - which had been the most unpleasant and the most painless all at the same time. 

He can remember her smile, strained and fake and genuine and bright all at the same time, pulling at her cheeks in a way both twisted and sweet. He’d never known how she could do it, keeping that smile like a mask so strong it’s melted into her face, which is why she would have been such a fitting friend. Not for him, of course. 

Unlike Yumeno, unlike Saihara, unlike Iruma, she had seemed to hold no resentment for him. Her voice had been light and chipper like small bells ringing in the wind, but just as tired as everyone else’s. She had told him not to apologise before he had even spoken, and told him that it had just been her time for God to collect her from the simulation. But, she had said, that if he tried those antics again, of disrupting the peace, she’d have to get God to curse him. 

He does not remember the others. Or, at least, the events merge into one, in which he can’t remember when they happened, or what order they happened, or what he said, or what they did. There is, of course, flashes of memories. A fist in his face when Chabashira lunges at him, Momota’s crossed arms, Hoshi’s sigh. 

Sometimes, he wonders, if those memories are even real at all. If he is the only one that is fiction here, or if they all are. But sometimes, he wonders, does it even matter if everything is fiction? He is, ultimately, nothing. Regardless of whether his words or past or emotions are real, he’s been stripped of everything that made him worthwhile. 

All that’s left is the imposter in the mirror, with half-lidded eyes bearing bags and scarred arms that are too ugly to be loved and lips that are too foreign to be comfortable. He’s been stripped of everything that made him real, if he ever was in the first place, and stripped of the only being that ever gave him an ounce of love, even if the possibility that he never deserved it stands. 

(Of course, there’s still the question; what does he do now? He could lighten the load and relieve everyone of himself. But, perhaps, Team Danganronpa has already accounted for scenarios like this, and all it would do is make things worse.) 

He runs his, her, their fingers over the ugly flesh on the body’s arms. It’s… yes, it’s almost time for a meal, isn’t it? Whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner (he’d lost track of which was which ages ago), something in the back of his mind reminds him that if he isn’t accounted for at meal time, the staff have full clearance to enter his room. 

The least he can do is straighten his posture. To look less like a mess. When he turns, the world blurs, but he’s done this enough times for the muscle memory to set in. Or, maybe, it’s the invisible puppetmaster, guiding him through doorways that he barely registers and repeating steps that he doesn’t feel. 

Talking, in this state of mind, would be… not ideal, so it’s almost miraculous that the hallways are empty, save for the occasional nurse. He can simply let the body carry him to his destination. 

It’s much louder in the poor room that Team Danganronpa had designated as the cafeteria, but that’s alright. He only ever sits by himself anyway, away from the noise and the talking and people that won’t dare spare him a look of anything but disgust, let alone start conversation regardless. It doesn’t hurt. Not really. He understands. 

It seems that the food, this time, is rice. Dull and undercooked. Even if he’s so detached that he can barely taste it, he can’t help but wish that they’d have given Toujou permission to cook for them, as she had begged. 

Somewhere, in all of the white noise, he can hear Ouma laughing, and someone else yelling. He’s not sure when he lost the need to observe, and he’s not sure if it means anything when he’s not bothered enough to check for the source of the yell. 

He’s not sure if he could listen to the voices, in their blends of annoyed and tired and soft and loud even if he tried, so he resigns to not trying at all. 

Until someone says his name.

He’s not sure how long Akamatsu’s been sitting across from him when he notices that she’s there, with messy hair tied back and a smile so soft that only she can deliver it. He spots a hint of makeup on her face and idly wonders how she convinced the nurses to give her some before he realises that she’s been talking again. He hums, a single confirmation that he’d only just started to listen, and she shuffles on the spot.

“Shinguji-kun,” she says, but even the name feels foreign on her tongue, applying to someone that shouldn’t really exist. Someone that doesn’t feel like he’s existing. “I… Ouma-kun is making trouble, and it looked a lot quieter over here.” He doesn’t need to analyze her speech to know that she’s choosing her words delicately, as if she’s trying to tiptoe around some kind of wild animal, or trap, or hunter, or murderer. “And, geez, I know we haven’t talked for ages, but… how are you?” 

A broad question. He considers answering with a shrug, ambiguous enough not to draw concern without having to fake happiness. After all, the body is fine, isn’t it? There’s little aches, little wounds, little scrapes that aren’t scars. Even if he’s the imposter in the body, it’s what Akamatsu sees as him, so on a technical level, it wouldn’t be incorrect to answer that he’s fine, right? 

Akamatsu waits patiently. He regards himself. 

Regards how the body isn’t his own, regards how he longs so much for her embrace again, her makeup, her whispers, her love. Regards his sixteen year old self, his fourteen year old self, his eleven year old self, who might have been fiction all along. Is Akamatsu asking how the body is? Or is she asking for the murderer behind the mask? The one who let the strings guide him into slamming that piece of wood into the back of Angie’s head, the one that watched Yumeno shriek at the dead Chabashira on the floor, the one that let himself get flustered, lose his composure, lose her, at the trial? 

He regards it. How is he? 

He doesn’t know.


End file.
